Vehicle seats, air passenger seats or motor passenger seats in particular, are known in a plurality of embodiments. Modern vehicle seats have a large number of possible settings for the seat component and the back rest. In addition, good upholstery and arm rests increasing comfort are currently included in the standard.
Regarding leg comfort, however, much remains to be desired. While high-quality vehicle seats such as are used in first class or business class, also have leg rests, the leg and foot area has below it in its entirety one support surface as an integral component of the seat. Only because of cost and space considerations, these conventional solutions are not employed for standard areas, such as the economy class in aircraft or for standard seating in commercial vehicles such as buses.
A vehicle seat of the type in question is disclosed in EP-B-0539444. In this conventional layout of a bracing component, the latter supports the entire lower leg, including the foot area, of a seat occupant. The conventional bracing component is connected on both sides to a support arm. Each support arm is hinged to the seat frame support, pivotably and in assignable positions. Individual rest elements are integrated into the interior of the combined foot and leg rest. These rest elements may be folded out from a flat initial position to positions at various angles. The feet of a seat occupant may be placed in different positions at different elevations on the conventional bracing component. Because of the large number of movable and adjustable parts, this solution is a complex and costly in application. Despite the large number of potential settings, a particular setting is inflexibly assigned to the occupant of the seat, so that the latter must of necessity remain with a mandatory setting for a protracted period.
DE-A-4016687 discloses a generic seat layout in vehicles, passenger vehicles in particular, having a seat movably mounted in a vehicle and a pivoting back rest opposite this seat component. The conventional seat may be adjusted between a reclining position and a semi-kneeling position. The back rest is movable between a vertical position and a reclining position on a common seating axis which is fastened non-rotatably transversely to the longitudinal axis, and more or less adjustably in the longitudinal direction of the vehicle. Secured on the floor of the vehicle, in front of the seat, is a leg rest which may be moved to different swivel positions for use as a foot, shin, or lower leg rest. The bracing component involved may be vertically adjusted by a longitudinally adjustable support arm. The upper support surface facing away from the floor of the vehicle assumes the support function exclusively for all the referred leg areas. By an energy accumulator in the form of an elastic component, the bracing component is held in a base position as calf support with a number of possible pivot positions. The conventional bracing component may be moved from this base position against the force of the energy accumulator to another one of a number of possible pivot positions, so that the seat occupant may rest in a kneeling position with the front of his leg below the knee joint on the bracing component. Consequently, the conventional layout allows the seat occupant to assume a half-kneeling sitting position in a vehicle, something otherwise known only in the office furniture area. Since the support arm is to be connected to the floor of the vehicle in the area of one of the free ends of the arm, this conventional solution is also bulky in design and costly in production.